Food pantries' cupboards are closer to bare

There are two long-standing policies at Elijah's Promise, a soup kitchen in New Brunswick: Every meal should have fruit and vegetables. And no one hungry gets turned away.

But lately, rising food costs have made it hard for Elijah's Promise to follow its golden rules.

"The selection is limited. Funding is down. When will I get another order in? I don't know," said kitchen manager Tony MacLachlan, running a hand over a bare pantry shelf. "You've got to make something, virtually, out of nothing."

In New Jersey and across the country, the rising price of food has thrown emergency food providers into crisis.

Even before costs started climbing, more than 35 million people nationwide were unable to afford adequate food. But average food costs have jumped 5.1 percent since last year, forcing more people, including many middle-class families, to turn to food pantries and soup kitchens.

"We're all being affected by rising food prices. The difference is the person making $20,000 a year can't afford more price increases. The person making $50,000 can absorb them with pain," said Jim Weill, president of the Food Research Action Center in Washington.

"We're in the middle of a recession. . . . Incomes are going down at the same time that prices are going up," he added. "It's a double whammy, and it's very harsh."

New Jersey's emergency food providers are also feeling a two-way crunch -- rising prices are making it tougher to keep the shelves stocked at the same time more people are coming in the door for help.

"It's that kind of perfect storm," said Adele LaTourette, project director for the Statewide Emergency Food and Anti-Hunger Network.

At CUMAC/ECHO, a Paterson food pantry run by the Rev. Pat Bruger, the client base has grown close to 30 percent since January, raising the monthly average of people served from 2,000 to 2,600. The number of senior citizens has grown by more than 30 percent, the number of children by 11 percent.

"Pantries were serving people who were in emergency need, and they were mostly on welfare. Now they're . . . working families and people on fixed incomes," she said. "We did not foresee this. Not at this level."

Part of the problem is the drop in private donations. As people pinch pennies in their own kitchens, fewer are buying extra canned or dry goods to donate.

But even more alarming, lean times have hit the Community Foodbank of New Jersey, which distributes food including milk, eggs and fresh produce to about 1,600 food providers around the state, annually reaching nearly half a million hungry people.

A number of factors are at work, according to executive director Kathleen DiChiara. The high price of diesel fuel has made it increasingly expensive to distribute food. Although the state has committed millions of dollars to aid emergency food providers, the federal government drastically cut the Emergency Food Assistance Program. And as supermarkets and food distributors work to cut their own costs, they've reduced donations, DiChiara said.

"What was donated before is now being sold," she said, explaining companies used to donate truckloads of mislabeled or lightly damaged goods. "Food companies have become more efficient, they are making fewer mistakes."

As a result, the Foodbank has been forced to spend precious dollars directly on food -- and even wholesale rates haven't protected it against the price squeeze.

Since 2006, DiChiara said, the price paid by the Foodbank for tuna has gone up 29 percent. Peanut butter is up 32 percent. Eggs prices are 27 percent higher, and milk costs 37 percent more.

"This is the biggest rise I have seen," she said.

DiChiara said she's particularly worried as she looks ahead to the summer months, when kids who get free lunch at school will be out on break and when potential donors leave for vacation.

"Spring is usually not where we see an increase. The summer is the season of need," DiChiara said. "It scares the heart out of me, because so much is going to be dependent on our success."

Shortages at the Foodbank are already being felt by food pantries and soup kitchens like Elijah's Promise, which gets about 80 percent of its food there -- and clients are noticing the difference.

"The meals are not enough for a lot of people who come down, and there's not a lot of meat," said Anna, 42, of New Brunswick. She declined to give her last name. "There's nothing to give out."

Anna said she used to come to Elijah's Promise occasionally to help stretch her husband's social security check, but money grew tighter after her husband died last year. Unemployed with a family to support and the price of staples climbing, Anna said she comes to the soup kitchen daily.

"When my kids were in school, I gave canned goods," she said. "It's so hard to get back on your feet."